It was a Sunday evening. Graduation day. Families were driving home from the high-school ceremony with the windows down when the sirens started — and most people did what most people always do. They waited. They looked at the sky. They turned on the TV to see if it was serious this time.
The tornado that crossed Joplin that evening was three-quarters of a mile wide. One hundred and sixty-one people did not survive it. The National Weather Service assessment written afterwards found what these reports almost always find: the difference between the families who walked out and the families who didn't usually wasn't luck. It was a decision made years earlier, on an ordinary afternoon — which room, which trigger, which habit.
Every disaster report says the same quiet thing: the survivors decided before the storm did. This book is that decision, written down.
